For our final tip in this series we’re going to remind you of the importance of knowing what other members of your team have posted! There’s nothing more off-putting to your followers than having the same content posted repeatedly. If you lose a follower you will have to work very hard to try to get them back!

January seems to be flying by at an alarming rate and we hope you’re putting into practice our advice from our new year series on Organisation. The first parts of the series can be found HERE (where we talk about organising your schedule), HERE (where we discuss allocating roles effectively) and HERE (where we look at reviewing your processes).

For today’s tip we’re advising you to make sure you ALWAYS find time to check social media for notifications.

We advise spending a few minutes each day just checking to see whether you have any notifications on your social media channels. This doesn’t need to be scheduled into your social media plan as it can be somewhat of a moveable feast, but its important that you regularly check and respond to those that need responding to.

You don’t want to miss out on potential clients by missing them contacting you on your social media.

As you know for Tips on Tuesday throughout January we’re working on an organisation theme, the first two tips can be found HERE and HERE.

Continuing with the theme to help you aim for an efficient and effective 2017, our tip today is review. Whilst it is so important to actually have a social media presence, it is equally important to know that you’re doing it right. A poor executed social media account can be as off-putting to potential customers as not having one at all.

Schedule regular reviews throughout the year to look into what you’re doing, find out which posts performed best and play with your upcoming posts to do more of the same. If you find a post that didn’t work well, try to determine why so you can avoid making the same mistake!

We’re here to share the second tip in our January series on getting yourself ready for an efficient year on social media.

Make sure you allocate roles effectively. Use the talents of your staff and make sure they’re aware you want them to do regular social media updates. Make sure it is a visible part of their job description and not something you assume they will be doing.

Have regular meetings with them and find out what works and what doesn’t! There’s no point being on social media if you’re not using it effectively. Remember, social media is a free resource so having competent people using it is a great way of ogranically growing your online presence.

A report released today by the Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield entitled Growing Up Digital has stated that children are left to “fend for themselves” against the pitfalls of being on the internet such as online bullying or grooming.

Ms Longfield stated “The internet is an incredible force for good, but it is wholly irresponsible to let them roam in a world for which they are ill-prepared”. It is felt that social media applications in particular have a wealth of difficult to understand Terms and Conditions which leaves children unsure as to what they’re signing up for, including “hidden clauses” waiving privacy rights and allowing content children have posted to be sold.

One of the recommendations in the report was that children should study “digital citizenship” to learn about their rights and responsibilities online, so they are prepared for online activities. At Aire Media we’re passionate about online safety and offer a variety of training sessions for children and their parents. We feel it is really important that children are given the tools to harness the full potential of all the wonderful things the internet has to offer whilst maintaining their own safety.

Our rules for online safety remain: –

Take note of age regulations on social media platforms. Whilst they seem arbitrary, we believe that children aged 13+ are much more emotionally equipped to deal with online safety than a younger child.

Always go through the Terms and Conditions of new sites your children are signing up to with them and ensure both you and they understand the clauses they are agreeing to.

Always make sure your child has their privacy settings as high as possible.

Keep dialogue open with your children – ensure they feel comfortable in discussing what they’re doing online with you.

We wrote an in-depth piece on social media safety entitled SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CHILDREN FRIEND OR FOE. If you would like to talk to us more about what we can offer in terms of advice for children or how we can work with parents to ensure they’re fully versed in keeping their children as safe as possible on social media, please get in touch with us.

We’re back bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to jump straight into our Tips on Tuesday segment.

For January we’re going to be giving general tips to get you back into the mindset of achieving as much as you can from your online presence.

Our very first tip of 2017 is…….organisation!

Take time in your first week of the year to have a think about your online presence. Make a basic schedule of when you’d like to make posts on social media, schedule when you have important announcements to make or when you want your marketing campaigns to begin, have a think about what national events or industry specific events are coming up that you want to tap into.

Although it feels like you have a huge blank page ahead, making some basic plans now will mean that your time will be more efficiently spent throughout the year and most importantly you won’t overlook your social media presence during busy times.